Editorial

Abstract

Ecology is far and away the most cited journal in the ecological sciences. According to the ISI Journal Citation Reports (JCR), articles in our journal were cited more than 30,000 times during 2004 (the most recent year for which data are available). We are also proud to note Ecology's impact factor of 4.104, which places the journal at number 7 out of the 107 titles included in the 2004 JCR under the subject category “ecology.” We feel confident in making the claim that Ecology remains the premier journal in the ecological sciences. We strive to balance the demands of rigorous peer review with the authors' desire to publish their papers quickly. Only about 22 percent of the roughly 1,250 submissions we receive annually are accepted. We are extremely grateful to our highly professional yet volunteer reviewers and Editorial Board for careful evaluation of submissions and for the detailed reports they provide to authors. The timeliness of the review process continues to improve. We are very happy to note that the fastest three-quarters of submissions reach a first decision within two months of submission. Most accepted manuscripts are now appearing in print and online less than a year after submission. Accepted Reports appear even sooner. When everything goes right, an accepted Report can be published within six months of submission. We emphasize that concise writing and judicious use of Ecological Archives are the keys to rapid processing and publication of manuscripts. More than half of the papers published in Ecology during 2005 were associated with materials posted in Ecological Archives. We are also fortunate to have Janet Lanza serving as Ecology‘s Book Review Editor. She does a superb job of selecting roughly 40 books for review from the large number of volumes received and then soliciting expert reviews, editing the manuscripts, and maintaining the demanding schedule of the Book Review section of the journal. Finally, we are indebted to the extremely talented, conscientious, and efficient staff in the Publications Office for their hard work on behalf of the journal. We are very happy to announce the establishment of ESA's official Data Registry at http://data.esa.org. The editors strongly encourage the registration of data sets associated with manuscripts submitted to ESA journals. New links to the Data Registry from the Instructions to Authors and from the ESA submission site itself will facilitate the registration of data by our authors. Our hope is that the Data Registry will serve as a mechanism for “data discovery,” leading to communication (and possibly collaboration) between researchers and to meta-analyses. Data registry simply serves to announce the existence of data and to provide contact information. By registering data, one does not relinquish rights to research findings. In fact, the registry may serve to establish precedence for ecological studies. Our hope is that the Data Registry will eventually be linked to Data Archives containing the actual data referred to in the registry, and that all data underlying published papers in ESA journals will be readily available for purposes of verification, replication, and meta-analysis. At the “What Editors Want” session organized by ESA's Student Section for last summer's Annual Meeting, the journal editors were asked to establish a mechanism for assisting authors whose native language is not English in preparing manuscripts for submission. The Governing Board enthusiastically endorsed this idea, and so we are pleased to announce that ESA has established an online Bulletin Board where individuals can express their willingness to assist such authors. A “call for volunteers” has been e-mailed to all ESA members. Contact information for individuals who volunteer their services will be posted (along with areas of ecological expertise and languages spoken) at http://www.esa.org/authorhelp/. Note that ESA does not guarantee the availability of volunteers. Note also that the editorial services of volunteers will not in any way assure acceptance for publication by ESA journals. In the past, our advice has been that authors requiring English language assistance should enlist the aid of a colleague or service at their home institution. We still think this is the best solution. There are also “authors’ editors” for hire. A good source for finding authors' editors is the Council for Science Editors web site: http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/jobbank/services.cfm. Our goal is to publish the very best papers in ecology, regardless of the authors' native language. Our copy editors have always worked especially hard to improve the presentation of papers by nonnative speakers of English. We hope that the new ESA electronic Bulletin Board will further ensure that language barriers will not preclude communication of scientifically worthy papers in ESA journals.